A POSSIBILIDADE DE NOVAS EXPERIÊNCIAS COLETIVAS E DE PRODUÇÃO CULTURAL: Das Festas cívicas de Rousseau à Arte da vida em Guy Debord

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a critical analysis of the role of theater in society based on the Letter to d’Alembert on the Theatre (1758), in which Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticizes theater as a form of vanity and moral corruption, advocating instead for civic festivals as public manifestations aimed at popular participation and the preservation of communal bonds. The objective is to examine, in light of Rousseau, the type of spectacle suitable for a society centered on Being rather than Appearing, articulating this reflection with contemporary critiques by Guy Debord, Theodor W. Adorno, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. In dialogue with the concept of the “Society of the Spectacle” (1967), the research investigates how culture has transformed social life into representations that privilege image and consumption. It conducts a theoretical-critical analysis based on bibliographic review and comparative interpretation, articulating Debord’s theory with authors such as Feuerbach, Jappe, Barthes, and Rousseau, and relating it to contemporary cultural works such as Orwell’s 1984 and current musical productions. The methodology examines image mediation, commodity fetishism, and alienation from both historical and contemporary perspectives, drawing on philosophical, sociological, and cultural sources to interpret mechanisms of representation, consumption, and symbolic domination.The approach mobilizes empirical examples, such as May ’68, media phenomena, popular music, and pop culture idols, to demonstrate how spectacle operates in everyday life and to contrast these dynamics with Rousseau’s critique of appearances and civic festivals. Thus, the dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary, critical, and interpretative methodology that combines conceptual analysis, close reading, and the study of cultural manifestations. It also incorporates contributions by Adorno and Horkheimer on mass culture in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1986), by Gadamer on festivals in The Relevance of the Beautiful (1985), and by Rousseau scholars such as Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes (1997) and Jacira de Freitas (2003). The dissertation concludes that it is necessary to reflect on contemporary cultural practices, such as festivals and popular events, questioning whether it is still possible to foster genuine collective experiences in a society oriented toward appearance rather than being.